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The Rainbow Road To Oz
The Rainbow Road To Oz was a proposed, but never finished, Walt Disney Studios live-action musical feature film about characters in the land of Oz. Inspired by L. Frank Baum's Oz books, the film was to have starred an all-star cast, including the most popular of the talented and famous the original Mouseketeers from the Mickey Mouse Club, and it was to bring them from TV to film. Plot In the first scene, the Mouseketeers are wanting to create the movie and need Walt's help in creating it. To help convince Walt, the Mouseketeers have prepared a few informal sample sequences and give him a large book with the title "The Rainbow Road To Oz" emblazoned on the entire front cover. When Walt opens the book, he finds model sketches for the scarecrow, Patches the patchwork girl, Ozma the lost princess of Oz looking a lot like Annette Funicello, Dorothy Gale looking a lot like Darlene Gillespie, and a sketch of the cowardly lion done by legendary storyman Bill Peet. In the next sequence, Dorothy and her cousin Zeb Hugson ride a tractor over the rainbow to Oz and meet Polychrome on the way, where the patchwork girl emerges from a patchwork quilt. The scarecrow and Patches the patchwork girl meet for the first time. The patchwork girl twirls merrily and apparently thoughtlessly down the yellow brick road, stopping to pick a patch hanging off a nearby tree filled with patches and adding it to her dress. The scarecrow is drooped over the fence, wakes up when he hears her sing, and hops over the fence to join in. After the song, they do a little dance and both end up on the ground. The song they sing is titled "Patches". The villain casts a mysterious magic spell on the cowardly lion who is the current king of Oz, that had turned him into a cruel and conceited monarch, so Dorothy and her friends (the scarecrow, the patchwork girl, Ozma, Zeb, another farmhand, and another princess), try to break the spell by performing "The Oz-Kan Hop", a lively song-and-dance number that is “part Kansas and part Oz”. As Dorothy sings, she offers other mix combinations so that it is part Kansas square dance and part Oz quadrille, a dance performed by four couples in a square formation. Dorothy and Zeb dance, followed by the more comic eccentric dancing of the scarecrow and the patchwork girl and finally an almost balletic solo by Ozma where everyone except the still uninterested lion wearing his long red robe joins in for the big finish. And finally Ozma, the true heir to the throne of Oz, is recovered. When Walt finally agrees that he will make the film, the iconic Mickey Mouse Club curtains part to reveal a huge birthday cake for the celebration. The costumed performers interspersed with other Mouseketeers dance around the rainbow colored cake and up a ramp to the top where there are enormous candles while singing the title song "The Rainbow Road To Oz". Cast of characters Annette Funicello as Ozma Darlene Gillespie as Dorothy Gale Tim Considine as Zeb Hugson Kevin Corcoran as Button-Bright Jimmie Dodd as the cowardly lion Bobby Burgess as the scarecrow Doreen Tracy as Scraps the patchwork girl Karen Pendelton as Polychrome Tommy Kirk as himself Trivia Walt Disney had long been a fan of the colorful characters in a certain famous children's book, the original "The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz" novel by L. Frank Baum, and dreamed up one of his first ideas for a possible Oz project: a cartoon concept in which Mickey Mouse would be blown to Oz instead of Dorothy Gale. He quickly snatched up the movie rights to 12 of Baum's books: "The Emerald City Of Oz," "Glinda Of Oz," "The Lost Princess Of Oz," "The Magic Of Oz," "Ozma Of Oz," "The Patchwork Girl Of Oz," "Rinkitink In Oz," "The Road To Oz," "The Scarecrow Of Oz," "Tik-Tok Of Oz", "The Tin Woodman Of Oz", & "Dorothy And The Wizard Of Oz". Walt wanted to use the books as possible episodes of his television series, "Disneyland", so he hired TV writer Dorothy Cooper to adapt "The Patchwork Girl Of Oz" to the small screen, so she turned in an outline for a two-part episode called "Dorothy Returns To Oz", and finally her fleshed-out version of this teleplay, which was now titled "The Rainbow Road To Oz". In the 15-minute-long preview segment that was devoted to this forthcoming film, the Mouseketeers were trying to sell Walt Disney on the idea of turning "The Rainbow Road To Oz" into a movie, he finally agrees, and they finish with the grand number. This segment had two musical numbers, "Why Don't They Believe?" and "The Rainbow Road To Oz". Annette Funicello, Doreen Tracey, Darlene Gillespie, and Bobby Burgess were all in costume, appearing in possible musical numbers for this proposed motion picture, while Tommy Kirk was set to play the the villainous son of the wicked witch of the west in the story, but he appears only as himself and is silent throughout the segment. The Rainbow Road To Oz was shelved because the story and script were just not gelling due to a possible comparison with and not up to the same standards of the Harold Arlen score of the MGM film of The Wizard Of Oz. However, Walt was still very fond of the Oz characters, so he used the remains of The Rainbow Road To Oz in a commercial item in the form of the Disneyland Records "story and songs" book-and-record album "The Cowardly Lion Of Oz", an entirely new and completely original story with songs, that does not resemble the Ruth Plumly Thompson book of that title, even though the album cover credits the book as the source. The soundtrack includes two songs from the proposed film, "The Oz-phabet" and "The Pup Pup Puppet Polka", along with four other songs that may have also been intended in some form for the film: "Livin’ A Lovely Life", "Trouble In Oz", "Just Call Smarmy", and "If You’ll Just Believe". This implies that the story on this record has some kind of a relationship to the screenplay of The Rainbow Road To Oz. Bill Peet and his good friend, fellow Disney storyman Joe Rinaldi, produced hundreds of character sketches for the proposed film project, including one of a full-figured, elegantly gowned Ozma with a crown and an Oz headband standing on a balcony with a unique Ozian wand. There was also a color photo of the patchwork girl costume composed of red, blue, yellow, and green patterned material, which was inspired by artist John R. Neill’s original illustration and coloring scheme for the character from the 1913 novel. Category:Movies Category:The Wizard Of Oz